Don McLean at the Spencer: Do you believe in rock and roll?

Iconic McLean takes the stage Saturday

When Don McLean first started playing folk music in the early 1960s, he said he didn't really consider himself a songwriter.

"I never thought I had any writing ability," McLean said in a recent interview with the Ruidoso News. "I never thought of myself as a songwriter. I always thought of myself as an instrumentalist and a singer in sort of the folk rock/early rock genre. I could play guitar and I felt I was a good singer."

McLean, who is set to play the Spencer Theater Saturday, would go on to pen such hits as "American Pie," "Vincent," "Empty Chairs" and "And I Love You So."

"I started writing songs only because there were no more songs that I could sing that said the things I had in my head and on my mind and I thought 'Jeeze, I'm going to have to write this,'" McLean said.

While he is probably best known for "American Pie," the meandering eight-minute-plus ballad that honors Buddy Holly and obliquely touches on many other artists of the 1960s, McLean said it was never his intent to write one of the more iconic songs of the 20th Century.

"I struck commercial gold but I never was a commercial artist," McLean, who had no formal song-writing lessons or poetry classes, said. "I've done many different things and most of them have not been commercially successful, because I don't repeat myself. I'm always looking for a different form.

"My goal has always been to be the artist that I am and the artist I want to be and to talk about the things that are interesting to me or the concepts that I come up with regardless of what the public may expect me to do, which is American Pie II, III, IV, V, whatever."

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"American Pie" would be voted No. 5 in a poll of the 365 Songs of the Century compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2001. It was beat out of the No. 1 spot by "Over the Rainbow," "White Christmas," "This Land is Your Land," and "Respect."

The release of "American Pie" also brought Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash in February 1959 with Ritchie Valens and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, back into the spotlight.

Keith Perry exclusive images of Don McLean, one of America's most enduring singer-songwriters who is forever associated with his classic hits "American Pie" and "Vincent," pictured performing at The Sage Gateshead. (Courtesy)

"His wife, Maria Elena, has said many times that (Buddy Holly) gained more popularity in the six months after the release of 'American Pie' than he had ever gotten in his entire career," McLean said. "The song actually led to the '50s and '60s music radio format that became so popular around the country in the 1970s. "American Pie," and I say this with humility, did a lot to bring back this wonderful music so people could enjoy it again."

McLean said the music of Buddy Holly specifically and growing up in the 1950s in general, continues to have a strong influence on his music.

Life in the '50s

McLean was born on Oct. 2, 1945, in New Rochelle, N.Y., and, because of asthma, he spent much of his time as a child at home.

Musician Don McLean performs onstage during day 2 of 2014 Stagecoach: California's Country Music Festival at the Empire Polo Club on April 26 in Indio, Calif. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Stagecoach)

"Television and records and books meant a lot to me and helped me create my fantasy world," McLean said. "I avoided being socialized into the basic world in which I was supposed to function. So what that did was it allowed me to invent a way of thinking of things and using my mind, which was not trained like other kids. I didn't get along with other kids, because I was by myself so much and I didn't think the way they thought in a lot of ways because they were with the herd."

He said growing up in the 1950s meant, "Everything was exciting — the World Series, commercials on television and the different shows."

"Rock and roll was like Wham-O, like hula-hoops or things like that, it was considered to be a jokey-fad," McLean said.

Don McLean performs during the Fourth of July Celebration at the Field of Dreams in Las Cruces earlier this year. (Carlos Javier Sanchez — Sun-News)

Any craziness that occurred in the 1950s was set against "an almost Victorian backdrop," which made it even more stunning.

When George Peter Metesky, who was known in the press as "the Mad Bomber," set off home-made explosives throughout New York City in 1951, 1954 and 1955, that "focused everyone's attention," McLean said.

"And now, you know, everyone's got a bomb. Now we get a school shooting a day and nobody even pays attention. It's like 'Oh, there's been another shooting, that's too bad — next.'"

A few months after the tragedy of Holly, another death occurred with the suicide of George Reeves, who played television's "Superman," in the 1950s.

"I always thought the mystery of George Reeves' death was an American story, an American media story, that was always very interesting to me," McLean said. "He would go around in his costume and make appearances until a child showed up with a real gun to see if the bullets would really bounce off of him. Then he started wearing regular suits."

The fascination with Reeves would lead to McLeans' song "Superman's Ghost," which could either be a tribute to Reeves or McLean's fear of being typecast or both.

Then and now

While "American Pie" was released more than 40 years ago, he continues to write and record songs of relevance, including "Run Diana Run," off of his 2009 release, "Addicted to Black," which examines how the media ultimately chased Princess Diana to her death.

"Prior to the death of Princess Diana, my wife was over with me on a British tour in the '80s sometime and there was some guy who photographed Diana while she was exercising and took the photo at crotch level with her legs spread apart," McLean recalled. "And it got into the newspapers and for the entire month, the British tabloids, television, were raging on about this to the extent that no one cared about the roads, potholes, or terrorists. It was just this picture. And I told my wife, 'This is so intense, this could kill a person. It could actually kill a human being who was exposed to this kind of attention relentlessly. So when she did pass away, I had already thought about this song. So that's how it happened."

The song also highlighted McLean's different take on Diana's fate as opposed to how other songwriters handled it.

"All there are are these tributes that are kind of gooey, instead of the gritty truth that I thought her story really deserved," he said.

Much of his songwriting centers around loss, he said.

"There is a lot of loss in my music because of my own experience and being lonely. I was a very lonely child. Everybody loses. There are a lot more losers out there than winners. The best way to produce feelings is to tell a beautiful story and people will either relate to it or they won't."

As far as comparing the music industry to the industry of his beginnings, McLean is blunt.

"I think music is missing from the music industry today. One of the things that helped to ruin music is rap. I don't want to call it music because it's not music, there's no melody. It's more of an attitude than anything musical. It's much easier for a person to rap than it is for someone to sit down and actually write a song. And it's taken over. It's moronic and it's dumbed down the audience to even hear music, I think."

McLean said, for himself, writing songs has become easier.

"It's thought out and a rather torturous process, but lately I've been enjoying it and it used to be that I did not enjoy it," he said. "Things would keep me up at night, wrestling with a word or a sentence and I wanted to get some sleep. I'm writing a lot of songs right now for another album. I wasn't going to make any more albums, but I just couldn't help myself, so I'm going to make one more."

McLean said when he comes to the Spencer Theater he will be accompanied by four other musicians with songs ranging from "dynamic" to the more quiet, including some selections with McLean performing solo with his guitar.

"I love people who come to hear music," McLean said. "I like it when it feels like the audience is excited about seeing me. I don't like it when I feel like the audience is expecting me to prove something, which is something I won't do, I don't have to prove anything. This is a business and we do shows and some are great and some stink. Most of them are very good, and we roll along."

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